LeBron James called it "by far the best game I've ever been a part of." It's too bad lots of ticket-holding Heat fans weren't left to see the end. Gotta beat traffic, you know.

It's going to take a long time for Heat fans, who already have a reputation as some of the worst in sports, to live down Game 6. With 28 seconds left and San Antonio up four and heading to the line, we all thought the game was over. (Of course, you know how that went.) So fans started streaming for the exits.

The above photo, taken by Bomani Jones, was the first sign that the American Airlines Arena was clearing out. This Vine, from Rembert Browne, shows in scene at one of the portals:

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And via Bob's Blitz, watch the crowd in the background as Ginobili takes his free throws:

But then a funny thing happened. The basketball gods granted us an all-time thriller. Ginobili missed a FT; LeBron hit a three. Kawhi Leonard missed a FT; Ray Allen hit a three. Tie game. Overtime. And somehow, those Heat fans heading for their cars caught wind. What followed was a desperate rush to get back into the arena, and to pretend they didn't suck.

The first 30 seconds of this AP video capture some of the scene outside the AAA, as fans leave dejectedly, then rush back when they learn the game is heading to overtime.

And here's a little first-person action to give you the sense of the type of people we're dealing with.

The reputation of Heat fans is a tricky thing. Sure, attendance surged when LeBron James suited up, but the same thing happened in Cleveland. But the stereotype—Los Angeles Southeast, basically—isn't grounded in nothing, and it's going to be especially hard to shake after this. Both local and nationalmedia are explicitly covering the story of fans leaving early. It's one of many stories to come out of Game 6, but it's the only one where it's not hyperbolic to talk about "legacies."